Today is your birthday. It’s hard for me to believe that it’s been four years since we met … I remember your birth so vividly! There were two doctors in the room with us. Your dad had his head by mine – I could hear him praying in my ear. He glanced up seconds later and the room was filled with more than a dozen people – all of them prepared for your birth to be as crazy-difficult-traumatic as your brother’s. But with three pushes you were here – no drama, no life-saving techniques or machines needed. You were placed on my chest, I kissed your red, splotchy face, and my heart was full.

You’ve changed a lot in the past four years. Obviously, you can walk and talk and feed yourself, and you go to the bathroom on the toilet most of the time. This past year, though, in particular, you’ve become fiercely independent: You want to do everything by yourself, from pouring your breakfast cereal to brushing your hair to zipping up your winter jacket. You’ve gone from following your brother’s every move, obeying his every beck and call, to telling him no every now and then. Sometimes you take charge when you play together, building forts and obstacle courses and tents for your toys. While I miss the days you called balls “gollys” and dogs “gogs”, I’m glad you’re becoming your own person!

Because I think you’re pretty amazing. Even at the age of four, I can see great things in you!

You’re kind and compassionate. You love others – “I love everybody in the whole world!” you frequently tell me. I was so proud of you earlier this year when you noticed one little girl in your class who didn’t have any friends. She’s so shy that she doesn’t even speak to your teachers, she only smiles. But you made it your goal to become her friend – drawing pictures to give her, sharing your toys, inviting her to sit with you – and now you’re best friends! She scrambles over the other kids to sit next to you at rug time and even though I have yet to hear her voice, she always makes sure you see her wave good-bye at the end of the day.

You’re persistent. You don’t give up. I’ve seen you stand at the parallel bar for ten minutes before your coach is able to help you – and you keep trying, over and over and over again, to pull your feet up between your hands into a tuck position. And when you finally do it, your grin covers your entire face!

You’re organized. Sometimes to an extreme– you line up all 47 of your ”pups” at least six times a day, then move them all over the house – in order! – and eventually back to your room, where you put them to bed for the night. We’ve learned to start your bedtime routine 45 minutes earlier than your brother’s just so your pups can be tucked in in time!

You love to be the center of attention. You’re always saying “Look at me, Mommy! Look at this trick!” Sometimes it’s a gymnastics trick – a somersault or a dog tail or a stork stand. Sometimes it’s slurping up half a cup of juice with one pull on your curvy straw. Whatever it is, you’re always so proud of yourself!

You also love to make people smile. When someone is sad or hurt or sick, you’re the first to rush in, arms open, ready to offer a comforting hug. When I’m not feeling well you bring me books, hug me and kiss me, and crawl under the covers to keep me company.

You’re helpful. You’re always under my feet when I’m doing chores around the house. “What can I do Mommy? Can I help? What’s my chore?” And (unlike your brother!) you never, ever ask for payment!

You’re an artist. You can spend hours sitting at the kitchen table with a pile of white paper and crayons, drawing cats, dogs, dinosaurs, spiders, suns, and your latest favourite: traffic lights.

I hope you don’t outgrow any of these things as you get older.

I hope you don’t forget about them.

I hope I don’t forget about them!

It’s my job as your mother to love you, to nurture you, to support you – to help you develop roots, but eventually watch you take wing and fly.

That thought terrifies me!

I pray for you every day, sweet girl. I always have and I always will.

You’re growing up in a very different world – in a very different time! – than I did.

I pray for you to be strong.

I pray for you to be courageous.

I pray for you to be kind and compassionate, and to love others.

I pray for you to have a servant’s heart.

I pray for you to stay creative, and to pursue your passions.

But above all, I pray that God, “from his glorious, unlimited resources … will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” (Ephesians 3:16-19 – NLT)

When I was a little girl I was always doing something creative. I remember being holed up in my room for hours, drawing horses, trying to get the angle of the ears just right, or making candy wrapper collages for my notebooks. I wrote all the time – stories, poems, songs, essays. Inspired by Gordon Korman, I wrote my first novel in seventh grade – a mystery starring Ryder Strong and Ben Savage from Boy Meets World. I had all the time in the world to devote to my creative endeavours, as long as my homework was done in time!

I miss those days.

Now creativity seems like a luxury. I find myself encouraging my kids in their creativity, praising their choice of colours and solutions to problems when their artwork doesn’t turn out quite like they expected. I refer to the Beautiful Oops book often, reminding them that their projects don’t have to be perfect – sometimes it’s more about the process!

I need to tell myself the same thing.

I know that I’m the most myself when I’m being creative. I’ve noticed a change in my attitude, my mood, my productivity – when I push my creativity to the side. It’s a part of me that I need to pay attention to. It’s who God – the ultimate creator! – made me to be.

* * *

This is a poem I wrote for Ellie as part of the Coffee + Crumbs Year of Creativity course. We were encouraged to pick a childhood activity that we don’t do often (or in my case, ever!) and spend some time doing it. Really doing it.

I used to love writing poetry.

These days it feels like everything I write has a purpose and a deadline – so I sat in the viewing room at Ellie’s gymnastics class and watched her with my notebook open on my lap.

Maybe it’s just me, but in my experience beauty goes hand in hand with pain. You can’t have one without the other.

Today I’m sharing a story of how God created beauty from ashes:

“Three years ago we bought our son an adorable little t-shirt: “Big Brother Team Captain”, it said. He wore it to Grandma and Grandpa’s house that evening – he was so excited to share the big secret he had been keeping.

My husband’s parents were ecstatic – they had been waiting for a second grandchild since the day our son was born!

I was always a serious child. I liked rules, I liked routines, and I liked lists.

Maybe that’s why the youth retreat I attended when I was fifteen had such an enormous impact on my life.

I remember sitting in the dark conference room, squirming in my chair as the speaker talked about one of my least favourite topics: Boys. I was a late bloomer when it came to boys. Horses were much more interesting!

Nevertheless, I began paying attention when she started talking about a list. She explained that when she was in high school she had created a list of the qualities she was looking for in a boyfriend. If a boy didn’t possess all the qualities on her list, she wasn’t interested. We were given pen and paper and directed to create lists of our own. According to the speaker that weekend, if The Boy didn’t meet all the requirements on The List, he wasn’t the one God had chosen for us.

It seemed simple enough.

Lists were my thing, so I wholeheartedly embraced the project!

At first my list was very specific and looked something like this:

Must love horses.

Must love animals.

Must be older than me.

Must be smart.

Must have brown hair and brown eyes.

Must have a good sense of humor (but not a crude sense of humor).

Must be anti-drinking/smoking.

Must meet and be approved by my grandmother.

My list changed as I got older and actually began to develop relationships with the opposite sex. (At first I wasn’t sure if changing my list was allowed but decided it was when I realized there weren’t any boys in my entire town that fit all of my requirements!)

The List changed even more as I began to date real boys instead of fictional ones. (SPOILER ALERT FOR MY CHURCH GIRLS: TODD SPENCER ISN’T REAL!)

Items on my list that I once thought were deal breakers no longer were. I began to value traits like loyalty more than appearance and being treated with respect was more important than an undying devotion to my pet cat.

By the time I graduated from university The List had changed from that The Boy had to be to what he couldn’t be:

Bearded. By that point in my dating career I had firmly established that I did not like beards – or facial hair of any sort. It was prickly and scratchy and my hair got stuck to it like Velcro, never mind that kissing a man with a beard was sometimes downright painful, and I was always picking hairs out of my mouth that were not my own.

Anything but a New Brunswick boy. I was a maritimer and I wanted to stay that way.

A pastor. I grew up in the church. I wanted nothing of the politics and nothing of the drama.

When I moved to Alberta after university I wasn’t looking for love. I wasn’t looking for any sort of romantic relationship at all, to tell you the truth. My plan was to go to school, learn what I needed to learn, and go back to New Brunswick to start a youth ranch. Boys didn’t factor into the equation at all.

Especially not Alberta boys.

Then I met Nathan and I forgot all about The List.

He was everything I didn’t want:

David Crowder’s doppelgänger (proof here and here.) My husband has more hair on his face than our dog does on her entire body.

An Alberta boy – and not just that, a complete city slicker who had never seen a live chicken – in real life – until he visited New Brunswick with me when he was 25.

A pastor in every sense of the word except official job title. Nathan graduated from Bible College and worked in full-time ministry, then decided he preferred volunteer ministry positions instead of paid ones. He leads small groups, teaches Sunday School and Wee College, leads worship on Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings as well as at retreats and conferences, is involved in prison ministry – the list goes on!

What I thought I wanted wasn’t what God knew I needed. That silly list seems insignificant now, after ten years together. If I could write a new list and send it to my younger self, these are the qualities I would put on it:

Passion for God and things of God.

Love for family.

Patience.

Nathan meets all of those requirements easily!

He’s devoted to God and his family and he has more patience than anybody I have ever met! Who else would calmly pull over on the side of a busy highway to console his sobbing, hormonal, pregnant wife and pray for a dead coyote’s grieving family?

For the past ten years he’s been my rock.

He’s my support, he’s my encourager, he’s my inspiration.

He’s my love.

So although I’ve swallowed more beard and moustache hairs than I can count, dip my toes in the Atlantic ocean every five years instead of every weekend, and have fed my children cheerios in the church coffee shop on more Sundays (and Thursdays, and Saturdays) than I ever would have imagined – I’m happy. I’m more than happy. God has done abundantly more than I ever could have asked, or even thought to ask! – in giving me my husband.

For ten years I’ve blamed Bible College for my lost passion when it comes to reading the Bible.

If you’ve ever been to Bible College, maybe you can relate. In those days I read with a purpose: I read to prove something, for debates, to win arguments. I searched for obscure Scripture references to support an opinion I had already formed.

I knew the Bible. Sword drills were my jam. I had memorized large chunks of Scripture that I could recite when I wanted to impress someone with my vast theological knowledge.

When I finished Bible College I worked with youth. I had good marks so I thought I was ready to handle anything they threw at me. I searched the Bible for answers to their questions: “What makes Christianity better than other religions?” “Why is God the only way?” “Is homosexuality a sin?” “Why did my mom die?” I read the Bible for them, to answer their questions and help with their struggles – but not my own.

I knew the Bible, but my spirit was parched.

Then I became a mother and the kids became my excuse. With work, diaper changes, dayhome drop-offs and pick-ups and scrambling to keep the household running, Sure, I could quote Scripture to my children when I needed to, but I didn’t have time to read the Bible for anything more than the occasional Bible story when I remembered to do family devotions.

It wasn’t until my six-year-old innocently asked me one night before bed, “Mommy, why do we read the Bible?” that I realized that I was completely missing the point. I don’t have a specific purpose in mind when I spend time with my son, I do it because I love him. I love being with him, talking to him, learning about him and from him. He’s not an obligation, he’s not something to check off a list every day.

If something is really important, we don’t find the time, we make the time.

It wasn’t Bible College’s fault, it was mine.

I wasn’t reading. I wasn’t searching, I wasn’t showing up each day with the expectation that God would reveal Himself, His truth, to me – not for grades, or to win an argument, or to have something to share when it was my turn to lead a group devotion, but because He loves me.

I’ve done Bible reading plans in the past – chronological, historical, from beginning to end. This year I’m reading just to read, with no real plan and no goal in mind other than to get to know Jesus better. Not as an acquaintance, but as a Father and a creator and a friend. My perspective on reading the Bible has changed from being something to cross off my to-do list each day to something I look forward to each and every morning when I wake up.

Lord, I don’t want to go through the motions anymore. The Bible says that You make all things new – so please, make my heart new. Make my mind new. Make my life new! Proverbs 8:17 says “I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me.” I’m seeking, Lord. I want to desire You more than anything else. Renew my passion for You and for Your Word!